NAME

Net::hostent - by-name interface to Perl's built-in gethost*() functions


SYNOPSIS

 use Net::hostnet;


DESCRIPTION

This module's default exports override the core gethostbyname() and gethostbyaddr() functions, replacing them with versions that return ``Net::hostent'' objects. This object has methods that return the similarly named structure field name from the C's hostent structure from netdb.h; namely name, aliases, addrtype, length, and addr_list. The aliases and addr_list methods return array reference, the rest scalars. The addr method is equivalent to the zeroth element in the addr_list array reference.

You may also import all the structure fields directly into your namespace as regular variables using the :FIELDS import tag. (Note that this still overrides your core functions.) Access these fields as variables named with a preceding h_. Thus, $host_obj->name() corresponds to $h_name if you import the fields. Array references are available as regular array variables, so for example @{ $host_obj->aliases() } would be simply @h_aliases.

The gethost() funtion is a simple front-end that forwards a numeric argument to gethostbyaddr() by way of Socket::inet_aton, and the rest to gethostbyname().

To access this functionality without the core overrides, pass the use an empty import list, and then access function functions with their full qualified names. On the other hand, the built-ins are still available via the CORE:: pseudo-package.


EXAMPLES

 use Net::hostent;
 use Socket;

 @ARGV = ('netscape.com') unless @ARGV;

 for $host ( @ARGV ) {

    unless ($h = gethost($host)) {
        warn "$0: no such host: $host\n";
        next;
    }

    printf "\n%s is %s%s\n", 
            $host, 
            lc($h->name) eq lc($host) ? "" : "*really* ",
            $h->name;

    print "\taliases are ", join(", ", @{$h->aliases}), "\n"
                if @{$h->aliases};     

    if ( @{$h->addr_list} > 1 ) { 
        my $i;
        for $addr ( @{$h->addr_list} ) {
            printf "\taddr #%d is [%s]\n", $i++, inet_ntoa($addr);
        } 
    } else {
        printf "\taddress is [%s]\n", inet_ntoa($h->addr);
    } 

    if ($h = gethostbyaddr($h->addr)) {
        if (lc($h->name) ne lc($host)) {
            printf "\tThat addr reverses to host %s!\n", $h->name;
            $host = $h->name;
            redo;
        } 
    }
 }


NOTE

While this class is currently implemented using the Class::Struct module to build a struct-like class, you shouldn't rely upon this.


AUTHOR

Tom Christiansen


DISCLAIMER

We are painfully aware that these documents may contain incorrect links and misformatted HTML. Such bugs lie in the automatic translation process that automatically created the hundreds and hundreds of separate documents that you find here. Please do not report link or formatting bugs, because we cannot fix per-document problems. The only bug reports that will help us are those that supply working patches to the installhtml or pod2html programs, or to the Pod::HTML module itself, for which I and the entire Perl community will shower you with thanks and praises.

If rather than formatting bugs, you encounter substantive content errors in these documents, such as mistakes in the explanations or code, please use the perlbug utility included with the Perl distribution.

--Tom Christiansen, Perl Documentation Compiler and Editor


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